Datasheet

Working With AutoCAD
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21
Making Changes
You’ll frequently make changes to your drawings. One of AutoCAD’s primary advantages is the
ease with which you can make changes. The following exercise shows you a typical sequence of
operations involved in changing a drawing:
1. Use the Save As option in the Application menu to save the current Clip.d wg file under
the name MyFirst. For convenience, you can save your files in the My Documents folder.
2. From the Home tab’s Modify panel, click the Erase tool (the one with a pencil eraser
touching paper). This activates the Erase command.
Notice that the cursor has turned into a small square. This square is called the pickbox. You
also see Select objects: in the Command window and the Dynamic Input display. This
message helps remind new users what to do.
3. Move the pickbox over the drawing, placing it on various parts of the clip. Don’t click
anything yet. Notice that as you hover your cursor over objects with the pickbox, they’re
highlighted. This helps you see the objects that the pickbox is likely to select should you
click the left mouse button.
4. Place the pickbox on the crosshatch pattern of the clip (see Figure 1.16), and click. The
crosshatch changes in appearance from a dark highlight to a light highlight. The pick-
box and the Select objects: prompt remain, indicating that you can continue to select
objects.
5. Press ↵. The crosshatch disappears. You’ve just erased a part of the drawing.
“I Can’t Find My Automatic Saves!”
As an IT manager at ELS Architecture and Urban Planning, one of the most common questions I get
is “Where does AutoCAD put the Automatic Save files?” By default, in Windows XP, the Automatic
Save file is stored in C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\Local Settings\Temp\. You
can find the exact location for your system by typing Savefilepath↵ at the Command prompt. This
file location is often set as a hidden folder, so you may need to set up Windows Explorer to display
hidden folders before you can get to the Automatic Save file. You can also specify a different loca-
tion for the Automatic Save files. See Appendix B for information on how to locate hidden files and
specify a location for your files.
In this exercise, first you issued the Erase command, and then you selected an object by using
a pickbox to click it. The pickbox tells you that you must select items on the screen, and it shows
you what you’re about to select by highlighting objects as you hover the cursor over them. Once
you’ve clicked an object or a set of objects, press ↵ to move on to the next step. This sequence of
steps is common to many of the commands you’ll work with in AutoCAD (see Figure 1.16).
You can also click an object or a set of objects and then press the Delete key.
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